Prefabricated buildings, such as commercial structures and residential homes, have become a popular alternative to “built-on-site” buildings. Prefabricated buildings include manufactured buildings, wherein the building is built in a factory setting, and prefabricated buildings, wherein the components of the building are prefabricated and precut in a factory setting. Companies, such as Fleetwood Enterprises, Inc., have factories organized in an assembly line fashion to build the individual components for a prefabricated home, such as the panels and the framework. The components are precut at the factory and shipped via truck to the site of the home for assembly.
One significant drawback to existing prefabricated building systems is that existing systems are only able to accommodate a single design or single model without having to significantly change the assembly line(s), which can be very expensive. Thus, consumers who desire to invest in prefabricated homes are only provided with a limited number of design options set by the manufacturers and lack the ability to select their own custom, or mixed-model, designs.
Another significant drawback to existing prefabricated building systems is that they require a significant amount of manual labor in the fabrication process, resulting in high fabrication costs per square foot.
Yet another significant drawback is that in order to ship the buildings, the buildings must be split into appropriate sized “modules” to fit on the back of a truck and fit within the typical dimensions of a highway lane. In order to create appropriate sized modules for shipping, a building is typically “forward engineered” in parts, wherein each part is designed to fit within the maximum allowable shipping limits, or envelope. In other words, consideration of the size and the dimensions of the shipping modules may override those of the consumer's desires in the design of the building. This may place undesirable limitations on the design of the building.
There are companies that offer “system-built” homes, such as those offered by All American Homes, which allow a user to create a custom design for a home using model rendering software, such as Chief Architect® or 3D Studio Viz®, and then build the home in a manufacturing facility. However, the manufacturing facilities used by these companies require a substantial amount of manual labor, again, resulting in high fabrication costs per square foot.
Accordingly, an improved system and method for manufacturing prefabricated building would be desirable.